Download or read book The Rise Fall and Rebirth of Secular Judaism written by Jonathan D. Sarna and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Not in the Heavens written by David Biale and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-10-18 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the origins and development of a Jewish form of secularism Not in the Heavens traces the rise of Jewish secularism through the visionary writers and thinkers who led its development. Spanning the rich history of Judaism from the Bible to today, David Biale shows how the secular tradition these visionaries created is a uniquely Jewish one, and how the emergence of Jewish secularism was not merely a response to modernity but arose from forces long at play within Judaism itself. Biale explores how ancient Hebrew books like Job, Song of Songs, and Esther downplay or even exclude God altogether, and how Spinoza, inspired by medieval Jewish philosophy, recast the biblical God in the role of nature and stripped the Torah of its revelatory status to instead read scripture as a historical and cultural text. Biale examines the influential Jewish thinkers who followed in Spinoza's secularizing footsteps, such as Salomon Maimon, Heinrich Heine, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Einstein. He tells the stories of those who also took their cues from medieval Jewish mysticism in their revolts against tradition, including Hayim Nahman Bialik, Gershom Scholem, and Franz Kafka. And he looks at Zionists like David Ben-Gurion and other secular political thinkers who recast Israel and the Bible in modern terms of race, nationalism, and the state. Not in the Heavens demonstrates how these many Jewish paths to secularism were dependent, in complex and paradoxical ways, on the very religious traditions they were rejecting, and examines the legacy and meaning of Jewish secularism today.
Download or read book The First Modern Jew written by Daniel B. Schwartz and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-12-01 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pioneering biblical critic, theorist of democracy, and legendary conflater of God and nature, Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was excommunicated by the Sephardic Jews of Amsterdam in 1656 for his "horrible heresies" and "monstrous deeds." Yet, over the past three centuries, Spinoza's rupture with traditional Jewish beliefs and practices has elevated him to a prominent place in genealogies of Jewish modernity. The First Modern Jew provides a riveting look at how Spinoza went from being one of Judaism's most notorious outcasts to one of its most celebrated, if still highly controversial, cultural icons, and a powerful and protean symbol of the first modern secular Jew. Ranging from Amsterdam to Palestine and back again to Europe, the book chronicles Spinoza's posthumous odyssey from marginalized heretic to hero, the exemplar of a whole host of Jewish identities, including cosmopolitan, nationalist, reformist, and rejectionist. Daniel Schwartz shows that in fashioning Spinoza into "the first modern Jew," generations of Jewish intellectuals--German liberals, East European maskilim, secular Zionists, and Yiddishists--have projected their own dilemmas of identity onto him, reshaping the Amsterdam thinker in their own image. The many afterlives of Spinoza are a kind of looking glass into the struggles of Jewish writers over where to draw the boundaries of Jewishness and whether a secular Jewish identity is indeed possible. Cumulatively, these afterlives offer a kaleidoscopic view of modern Jewish cultureand a vivid history of an obsession with Spinoza that continues to this day.
Download or read book Secularism in Question written by Ari Joskowicz and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2015-06-30 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For much of the twentieth century, most religious and secular Jewish thinkers believed that they were witnessing a steady, ongoing movement toward secularization. Toward the end of the century, however, as scholars and pundits began to speak of the global resurgence of religion, the normalization of secularism could no longer be considered inevitable. Recent decades have seen the strengthening of Orthodox movements in the United States and in Israel; religious Zionism has grown and radically changed since the 1960s, and new and vibrant nondenominational Jewish movements have emerged. Secularism in Question examines the ways these contemporary revivals of religion prompt a reconsideration of many issues concerning Jews and Judaism from the early modern era to the present. Bringing together scholars of history, religion, philosophy, and literature, this volume illustrates how the categories of "religious" and "secular" have frequently proven far more permeable than fixed. The contributors challenge the problematic assumptions about the development of secularism that emerge from Protestant European and American perspectives and demonstrate that global Jewish experiences necessitate a reappraisal of conventional narratives of secularism. Ultimately, Secularism in Question calls for rethinking the very terms that animate many of the most contentious debates in contemporary Jewish life and far beyond. Contributors: Michal Ben-Horin, Aryeh Edrei, Jonathan Mark Gribetz, Ari Joskowicz, Ethan B. Katz, Eva Lezzi, Vivian Liska, Rachel Manekin, David Myers, Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, Andrea Schatz, Christophe Schulte, Daniel B. Schwartz, Galili Shahar, Scott Ury.
Download or read book Wandering Jews written by Steven J. Gold and published by Purdue University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-15 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the importance of historical and contemporary migration to the American Jewish community, popular awareness of the diversity and complexity of the American Jewish migration legacy is limited and largely focused upon Yiddish-speaking Jews who left the Pale of Settlement in Eastern Europe between 1880 and 1920 to settle in eastern and midwestern cities. Wandering Jews provides readers with a broader understanding of the Jewish experience of migration in the United States and elsewhere. It describes the record of a wide variety of Jewish migrant groups, including those encountering different locations of settlement, historical periods, and facets of the migration experience. While migrants who left the Pale of Settlement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are discussed, the volume’s authors also explore less well-studied topics. These include the fate of contemporary Jewish academics who seek to build communities in midwestern college towns; the adaptation experience of recent Jewish migrants from Latin America, Israel, and the former Soviet Union; the adjustment of Iranian Jews; the experience of contemporary Jewish migrants in France and Belgium; the return of Israelis living abroad; and a number of other topics. Interdisciplinary, the volume draws upon history, sociology, geography, and other fields. Written in a lively and accessible style, Wandering Jews will appeal to a wide range of readers, including students and scholars in Jewish studies, international migration, history, ethnic studies, and religious studies, as well as general-interest readers.
Download or read book New Perspectives in American Jewish History written by Mark A. Raider and published by Brandeis University Press. This book was released on 2022-01-03 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ""New Perspectives in American Jewish History: A Documentary Tribute to Jonathan D. Sarna," compiled by Sarna's former students, presents heretofore unpublished, neglected, and rarely seen historical records, documents, and images that illuminate the heterogeneity, breadth, diversity, and colorful dynamism of the American Jewish experience"--
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Atheism written by Stephen Bullivant and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-11-21 with total page 781 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent books by, among others, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens have thrust atheism firmly into the popular, media, and academic spotlight. This so-called New Atheism is arguably the most striking development in western socio-religious culture of the past decade or more. As such, it has spurred fertile (and often heated) discussions both within, and between, a diverse range of disciplines. Yet atheism, and the New Atheism, are by no means co-extensive. Interesting though it indeed is, the New Atheism is a single, historically and culturally specific manifestation of positive atheism (the that there is/are no God/s), which is itself but one form of a far deeper, broader, and more significant global phenomenon. The Oxford Handbook of Atheism is a pioneering edited volume, exploring atheism—understood in the broad sense of 'an absence of belief in the existence of a God or gods'—in all the richness and diversity of its historical and contemporary expressions. Bringing together an international team of established and emerging scholars, it probes the varied manifestations and implications of unbelief from an array of disciplinary perspectives (philosophy, history, sociology, anthropology, demography, psychology, natural sciences, gender and sexuality studies, literary criticism, film studies, musicology) and in a range of global contexts (Western Europe, North America, post-communist Europe, the Islamic world, Japan, India). Both surveying and synthesizing previous work, and presenting the major fruits of innovative recent research, the handbook is set to be a landmark text for the study of atheism.
Download or read book Jews Judaism and Success written by Robert Eisen and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2023-06-23 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Jews, Judaism, and Success, Robert Eisen attempts to solve a long-standing mystery that has fascinated many: How did Jews become such a remarkably successful minority in the modern Western world? Eisen argues that Jews achieved such success because they were unusually well-prepared for it by their religion – in particular, Rabbinic Judaism, or the Judaism of the rabbis. Rooted in the Talmud, this form of Judaism instilled in Jews key values that paved the way for success in modern Western society: autonomy, freedom of thought, worldliness, and education. The book carefully analyses the evolution of these four values over the past two thousand years in order to demonstrate that they had a longer and richer history in Jewish culture than in Western culture. The book thus disputes the common assumption that Rabbinic Judaism was always an obstacle to Jews becoming modernized. It demonstrates that while modern Jews rejected aspects of Rabbinic Judaism, they also retained some of its values, and these values in particular led to Jewish success. Written for a broad range of readers, Jews, Judaism, and Success provides unique insights on the meaning of success and how it is achieved in the modern world.
Download or read book Jewish Secularity written by David M. Gordis and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A growing number of Jews identify themselves as secular or "somewhat secular." Is this expansive definition of Jewishness a new phenomenon? What are its roots? This insightful book provides an overview of a profound development in the evolving history of Jewish life in America.
Download or read book Zionism and the Roads Not Taken written by Noam Pianko and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-03 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, Zionism is understood as a national movement whose primary historical goal was the establishment of a Jewish state. However, Zionism's association with national sovereignty was not foreordained. Zionism and the Roads Not Taken uncovers the thought of three key interwar Jewish intellectuals who defined Zionism's central mission as challenging the model of a sovereign nation-state: historian Simon Rawidowicz, religious thinker Mordecai Kaplan, and political theorist Hans Kohn. Although their models differed, each of these three thinkers conceived of a more practical and ethical paradigm of national cohesion that was not tied to a sovereign state. Recovering these roads not taken helps us to reimagine Jewish identity and collectivity, past, present, and future.
Download or read book Contemplate written by and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Secular Sacred written by Markus Balkenhol and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do religious emotions and national sentiment become entangled across the world? In exploring this theme, The Secular Sacred focuses on diverse topics such as the dynamic roles of Carnival in Brazil, the public contestation of ritual in Northern Nigeria, and the culturalization of secular tolerance in the Netherlands. The contributions focus on the ways in which sacrality and secularity mutually inform, enforce, and spill over into each other. The case studies offer a bottom-up, practice-oriented approach in which the authors are wary to use categories of religion and secular as neutral descriptive terms. The Secular Sacred will be of interest to sociologists, anthropologists, ethnographers, political scientists, and social psychologists, as well as students and scholars of cultural studies and semiotics. Chapter 1 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.
Download or read book The Rebirth of the Hero written by Keiron Le Grice and published by Aeon Books. This book was released on 2019-06-10 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The portrayal of the hero in classical myths and modern films continues to exert a compelling influence on the collective imagination, entertaining and inspiring audiences the world over. On a deeper level, the myth of the hero's adventure is recognized as a fundamental pattern of human experience itself, a symbolic expression of the individual's struggle for greater consciousness, psychological wholeness, and spiritual realization. In The Rebirth of the Hero, Keiron Le Grice draws on the ideas and life experiences of C. G. Jung, Joseph Campbell, and Friedrich Nietzsche to explore the spiritual journey of the modern self, from existential crisis and the awakening of the self to the dramatic encounter with the underworld of the psyche and the arduous labour of spiritual transformation. In a work of wide-ranging scope and penetrating insight, Le Grice analyzes scenes from a number of popular films - Jason and the Argonauts, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Pan's Labyrinth, and more - to illuminate the themes and stages of psychospiritual rebirth and individuation, helping to make the deepest of transformative experiences more readily accessible and intelligible to us all. Drawing interchangeably on classical Greek myths, Christianity, alchemy, Romanticism, and depth psychology, the author also relates the individual's personal journey of transformation to the relationship in Western civilization between spirit and nature, reason and instinct, and masculine and feminine. In so doing, The Rebirth of the Hero demonstrates the critical significance of the archetypal pattern of the hero not only for the individual, but also for cultural renewal and the wider spiritual transformation of our time.
Download or read book Holy War in Judaism written by Reuven Firestone and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-02 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Holy war, sanctioned or even commanded by God, is a common and recurring theme in the Hebrew Bible. Rabbinic Judaism, however, largely avoided discussion of holy war in the Talmud and related literatures for the simple reason that it became dangerous and self-destructive. Reuven Firestone's Holy War in Judaism is the first book to consider how the concept of ''holy war'' disappeared from Jewish thought for almost 2000 years, only to reemerge with renewed vigor in modern times. The revival of the holy war idea occurred with the rise of Zionism. As the necessity of organized Jewish engagement in military actions developed, Orthodox Jews faced a dilemma. There was great need for all to engage in combat for the survival of the infant state of Israel, but the Talmudic rabbis had virtually eliminated divine authorization for Jews to fight in Jewish armies. Once the notion of divinely sanctioned warring was revived, it became available to Jews who considered that the historical context justified more aggressive forms of warring. Among some Jews, divinely authorized war became associated not only with defense but also with a renewed kibbush or conquest, a term that became central to the discourse regarding war and peace and the lands conquered by the state of Israel in 1967. By the early 1980's, the rhetoric of holy war had entered the general political discourse of modern Israel. In Holy War in Judaism, Firestone identifies, analyzes, and explains the historical, conceptual, and intellectual processes that revived holy war ideas in modern Judaism.
Download or read book The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God written by Justin Brierley and published by Tyndale House Publishers. This book was released on 2023-09-12 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Could We Be Witnessing a Return of Belief in Our Generation?Justin Brierley, the host of the popular radio show and podcast Unbelievable?, is convinced that in our time we are witnessing a growing wave of faith.Famously described as the "long, withdrawing roar" of the "Sea of Faith," the Christian narrative that shaped the West has been replaced by sweeping secularism. But is that the end of the story?It was a conversation with agnostic journalist Douglas Murray that led Brierley to investigate whether a change was on the horizon. Speaking of the "Sea of Faith," Murray remarked that tides come back in again and that a number of his intelligent friends had converted to Christianity in recent years. Brierley was seeing a similar trend among the secular thinkers he had interviewed on his show. Jordan Peterson, Tom Holland, Dave Rubin, and many others have found themselves surprised by the continuing resonance and relevance of Christianity, and they are joining in on conversations about faith.Readers will encounter Brierley's discussion of cultural trends and concepts including: The meaning crisis Public intellectuals embracing faith Why the Christianity story is ready to return And much moreIn The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God, Brierley outlines the dramatic fall of New Atheism and the birth of a new conversation on whether God makes sense of science, history, culture, and the search for meaning. People are returning to Christianity--but is the church prepared to welcome a new wave of faith?There's a new conversation building. The tide is coming.
Download or read book High Priest of Rebirth written by Jacob Bernard Agus and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book I L Peretz and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture written by Ruth R. Wisse and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2015-07-01 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I. L. Peretz (1852–1915), the father of modern Yiddish literature, was a master storyteller and social critic who advocated a radical shift from religious observance to secular Jewish culture. Wisse explores Peretz’s writings in relation to his ideology, which sought to create a strong Jewish identity separate from the trappings of religion.
